Stephan Reinhold

Overnight taxes are controversial. They affect tourists’ consumption behavior and hotels’ profits. This potentially generates undesirable industry practices such as underreporting overnights to evade overnight taxes. The aim of the paper is to understand the conditions and outcomes of underreporting. This is important because underreporting affects destinations’ tax income, which in turn may have further effects on tourismor other public services.

Recent research underlines the importance of understanding the tourist destination as a demand-driven construct. Visitors activate different configurations of supply elements that produce a complex and dynamic fabric referred to as a space of flows. Today, we have the means to understand how these flows shape the evolution and gestalt of tourist places. This article proposes a new framework combining three concepts and related foundational theories: visitor flows, trajectories, and corridors. In tandem, they describe how tourism manifests itself in space and time. Trip decision, trip execution, and tourist performance unfold through social mechanisms generating the totality of visitor flows. Stakeholders must understand how visitor flows in their destinations emerge and evolve in order to decide on specific design interventions.

Purpose – The need and legitimacy of DMOs are increasingly questioned. Still, the tourism literature provides little advice on how DMOs change and finance their activities for the benefit of their destination given contextual change. This conceptual article, contributes to filling this gap. We do so by proposing a typology of business models for destination management organizations. Design/methodology/approach – With the help of typological reasoning, we develop a new framework of DMO business model ideal types. To this end, we draw on extant literature on business model typologies and identify key dimensions of DMO business models from the tourism literature. Findings – The challenges DMOs face, as discussed in the tourism literature, relate to both ends of its business model: On the one end, the value creation side, the perceived value of the activities they traditionally peruse has been declining; on the other end, the value capture side, revenue streams are less plentiful or attached to more extensive demands. Based on two dimensions, configurational complexity and perceived control, we identify four distinct ideal types of DMO business models: the destination factory, the destination service center, the value orchestrator, and the value enabler. Originality/value – We outline a “traditional” DMO business model that stands in contrast to existing DMO classifications and that relates DMO challenges to the business model concept. The typology provides an integrated description of how DMO business models may be positioned to create and capture value for the organization and the destination(s) is serves. The ideal types point to important interdependencies of specific business model design choices.

Purpose This paper aims to review the state of the art for the Tourism Review special issue on “Business Models in Tourism”. The authors’ purpose is twofold: first, to contextualize the empirical and conceptual contributions featured in the special issue in relation to the state of research on business models in tourism. Second, the authors position the special issue in the broader scholarly conversation on business models to identify avenues for future research. Design/methodology/approach The authors systematically review the content of tourism-specific business model studies from leading literature databases to answer four questions relevant for future work on business models in tourism: First, how do tourism scholars define the business model concept? Second, what is the ontological stance (object, schema or tool) of existing studies of tourism business models? Third, what are the methodological preferences of existing work on business models in tourism? And finally, what qualifies as rigorous business model research? Findings From the critical review of 32 contributions, the authors identify a minimal consensus and dominant approach to conceptualizing the business model concept in tourism studies. In addition, the authors reveal a strong preference for small-n case study research designs. In sum, those findings point to important gaps and design decisions for future business model studies in tourism. Originality/value This review of the state of research on business models in tourism details research opportunities with regard to theory, methods and applications that tourism scholars can investigate to contribute to the theory and practice of business model management.

As advocates of a fascinating research context and an applied discipline, tourism and hospitality, scholars are developing unique concepts to explain travel-related phenomena and are on the lookout for new theories and theoretical frameworks from other disciplines that help them make sense of the shifts and swings in market behavior. The focus of this special issue, the business model concept, is part of the latter category and aligns with Tourism Review's aspiration to advance our understanding of tourism value creation from a multidisciplinary, holistic perspective.

Have you ever unexpectedly met someone you already knew in a remote travel destination? Many people have or will at least a couple times in their travel biography. In this article, we theorize how such chance meetings help better understand the socially embedded nature of travel behavior and choice. We validate the underlying assumptions with an exploratory empirical study. By conceptualizing chance meetings and connecting them with social network theory, we get closer to predicting where people precisely travel and what activities they engage in at particular points in time. This socially embedded perspective transcends the importance of attractions and activities as object of reference between traveler and place. Broadly, these findings contribute to the discussion on the social origins of travel and on how choices are taken in travel.

This article communicates the main insights of the third Biennial Forum on Advances in Destination Management (ADM), held in Vail, Colorado (USA). The substance of scholars’ and practitioners’ discussions can be divided into five topical domains: (1) relevance of experiences to the destination concept, (2) destination strategy and resilience, (3) the future of DMOs, (4) tourism taxation and regulation, and (5) big data and visitor management. For each domain, a goal-centered research agenda is offered, built on conference participants’ collective sense-making efforts during the three-day conference, followed by a dedicated consensus session.

Travel decision research still struggles to explain a large portion of the variance in travel choices. We argue that advances in this domain must originate from a shift in the kinds of questions we ask travelers to understand what triggers their decisions. The proposed shift from “Why did you . . . ?” to “How come . . . ?” changes the emphasis from retrospective sense giving to a contextual understanding of travel choice, focusing in particular on the constellations that produce actual travel behavior. This shift opens research avenues of a new theoretical and methodological nature and has fundamental implications for consumer research as well as destination marketing practices.

Purpose The need and legitimacy of destination management organizations (DMOs) are increasingly questioned. Still, the tourism literature provides little advice on how DMOs change and finance their activities for the benefit of their destination-given contextual change. This conceptual article aims to contribute to filling this gap. The authors do so by proposing a typology of business models for destination management organizations. Design/methodology/approach With the help of typological reasoning, the authors develop a new framework of DMO business model ideal types. To this end, the authors draw on extant literature on business model typologies and identify key dimensions of DMO business models from the tourism literature. Findings The challenges DMOs face, as discussed in the tourism literature, relate to both ends of their business model: On the one end, the value creation side, the perceived value of the activities they traditionally pursue has been declining; on the other end, the value capture side, revenue streams are less plentiful or attached to more extensive demands. On the basis of two dimensions, configurational complexity and perceived control, the authors identify four distinct ideal types of DMO business models: the destination factory, destination service center, value orchestrator and value enabler. Originality/value The authors outline a “traditional” DMO business model that stands in contrast to existing DMO classifications and that relates DMO challenges to the business model concept. The typology provides an integrated description of how DMO business models may be positioned to create and capture value for the organization and the destination(s) it serves. The ideal types point to important interdependencies of specific business model design choices.

Purpose Business models and the business model concept have become a fixture of scholarly and managerial attention. With a focus on how actors create, capture, and disseminate value, business model research holds the promise to inform the tourism sector’s search for ways to innovate and change outdated business practices. Yet, the concept has inspired little research tackling the contingencies of the tourism context. We address this gap in this review and research agenda on business models in tourism. Design/methodology/approach In this article, we review and synthesize contributions from publications in EBSCO, Emerald Insight, ProQuest, and Science Direct databases, that make explicit use of the business model concept in tourism (anytime up to September 2016). We conceptualize the identified articles as a coherent body of knowledge on business models in tourism with the objective of identifying common themes that characterize existing contributions. Findings From the review of 28 qualified articles we identify four emergent themes: (1) sector specific configurations, (2) the role of different value types, (3) design themes for consistency, and (4) regulatory contingencies. These themes inform three domains in which we present avenues for tourism-specific studies on business models as well as their management and innovation that we position in relation to the general business model literature. Originality/value Our review details how researchers across disciplines conceptualize the business model. Together with the identified directions for further research, this literature review article thus establishes a common conceptual basis and stock of knowledge for the study of business models in tourism research.